The French government was against the idea of races being held on public streets. After the Paris–Berlin race of 1901, the minister of internal affairs M. Waldeck-Rousseau stated that no other races would be authorized;
the Paris–Madrid was strongly supported by King Alphonse XIII of Spain, and French media suggested that France could not withdraw from the competition, being the country with the most advanced technology in car manufacturing.

Baron de Zuylen, president of the ACF, managed to overcome the opposition of Prime Minister Émile Combes by stating that the roads were indeed public, the public wanted the races, and many local administrators were eager to have a race pass through their towns.

Many French car manufacturers supported the request, employing of over 25 thousand workers and producing 16 million Francs per year of export alone. Since races were necessary to promote the brands, they interceded with the government who finally agreed with the race; the Council of Ministries and the President gave their support to the race on February 17, 1903, while the ACF had been accepting applications since January 15.

The rules called for four weight categories: less than 250 kg, 250 to 400 kg, 400 to 650 kg and 650 to 1000 kg; the weight was intended as dry weight, excluding the driver, fuel, batteries, oil, spare parts, tools, food and water, driver's luggage, headlights and lights harnesses, horns and eventual external starter.

The subscription cost ranged from 50 to 400 Francs, depending on weight; the two heaviest classes were supposed to have a driver and a mechanic (weighing no less than 60 kg, the same for the whole race), while the two lighter ones required only a driver.

The starting order was drawn at random between the cars enrolled in the first thirty days, and in progression for the drivers enrolled after February 15; the race start was established for the 3.30 AM of Sunday May 24, from Versailles Gardens, les Jardins de Versailles. As in many races before, the cars were to leave one by one, with a two-minute delay.

The "Absolutely Closed Parks" rule was introduced: at the end each race leg, the cars were to be taken by a commissioner to closed pens, where no repairs or maintenance were allowed. Any refueling or repairs had to be done during the race time. While in transit to the pens, the cars had to cross the towns in parade, accompanied by a race officer on a bicycle who was supposed to record the exact time of the crossing, which was later deducted from the overall driver's time; the time records were written on time slips and kept in sealed metal boxes on every car.

While Versailles – Bordeaux was a mainstay of road races (the Gordon Bennett Cup has been kept there in 1901), the Bordeaux – Vitoria leg presented more uncertainty: it was full of sharp turns, climbs, narrow bridges, rail crossings, stone roads and long, paved stretches where high speeds would be possible.

French newspapers were excited and covered the race with great enthusiasm; the race was presented as the biggest race since the invention of the car, and over 100,000 people managed to reach Versailles at 2 am for the race start. The first hundred of kilometers of the race track were crowded with spectators, and rail stations were swarmed with people trying to reach Versailles.

The crowd and the darkness convinced the organisers to delay the race start by half an hour, and to reduce the delay between cars to just one minute; the day was expected to be very hot, and the officials wanted to avoid the heat of the late morning.

The soldiers deployed to manage the crowd proved insufficient, and people swarmed the streets; the first racer to leave, Charles Jarrott with his mechanic Bianchi in a 1000 kg, 45 hp De Dietrich, tried to slow down to 40 miles per hour, to give people time to evacuate the road in front of the car, but it only worsened the problem since people just waited longer to move away.

De Knyff on his Panhard-Levassor left second, followed by Louis Renault in a 650 kg, 30 cv Renault. Théry in Décauville (640 kg, 24 cv), another De Diétrich, a Mors, a Panhard and a light Passy Thellier, (400 kg, 16 cv) were the next; the start took until 6.45 a.m., almost three hours.

The race proved to be very difficult for the drivers: the dangers from the crowd added to the thick dust cloud raised by the cars; the weather had been dry for the prior two weeks, and dust covered the roads. Officials watered down just the first kilometer of road, and the short delay between cars worsened the problem. Visibility dropped to few meters, and people stood in the middle of the road to see the cars, becoming a persistent danger for the drivers.

After the first control point in Rambouillet, and the second in Chartres the crowd became less dense. Just after Rambouillet, Louis Renault's wild racing style allowed him to overcome both De Knyff and Jarrott, who were struggling for first place but keeping a more prudent stance to avoid the crowd. Thery and Stead followed at distance, while Jenatzy's Mercedes and Gabriel's Mors were leading an incredible recovery, surpassing 25 cars and achieving a spot in the first ten drivers.

Another incredible feat was achieved by Marcel Renault, who started in the 60th position but managed to almost reach the race leaders at the control point of Poitiers.

Outside of the leading positions, the accidents continued throughout the day; cars hit trees and disintegrated, they overturned and caught fire, axles broke and inexperienced drivers crashed on the rough roads.

Louis Renault reached Bordeaux in first place at noon, while Jarrott, who was racing with a defective clutch and was troubled by mechanical problems to the engine and exhaust, arrived half an hour later followed by Gabriel, Salleron, Baras, de Crawhez, Warden, Rougier, Jenatzy and Voigt. All the drivers were physically exhausted: the cars were heavy, and required a great deal of force to maneuver. Dust made their eyes sore, and many of them had had issues with the engines and burned their hands while fixing them. Gabriel, who left as 168th and arrived third, was later recognized as the winner when the time slips were tallied up.

A few big names had to withdraw, and news slowly started coming to the finishing line. Vanderbilt broke a cylinder on his Mors, and had to leave the race. Baron de Caters's Mercedes hit a tree, but was unhurt and probably was fixing the car to keep racing.
Lady race car driver Camille du Gast (Crespin) was placed as high as 8th in her 30 hp De Dietrich until she stopped to help fellow driver E. T. Stead (Phil Stead) who had crashed. She finished 45th. Charles Jarrott, who finished fourth overall with his de Dietrich, asserted that Stead would have died if she had not stopped.[2]

News of an accident at Ablis arrived: a woman was hit by a car and injured; this later was found to be false.

Someone started talking about an accident involving Marcel Renault; with his incredibly fast pace he should have already arrived by that time, but was still missing. News arrived stating that he had an accident at Couhé Vérac, he would die 48 hours later, never regaining consciousness.
There is a memorial at the place where his accident occurred on the RN 10 road in the Poitou-Charentes region of France; this monument was destroyed by the Germans during World War II.

Porter's Wolseley was destroyed at a rail crossing where the bar was unexpectedly down; the car hit it and overturned, killing his mechanic. Georges Richard hit a tree in Angoulême, trying to avoid a farmer standing in the middle of the road, and news came that in Châtellerault Tourand's Brunhot had hit spectators while avoiding a child who crossed the road. A soldier named Dupuy intervened and saved the child, but was killed and the car lost control, killing a spectator.

Further south, another car left the road and went into a group of spectators. Two people were said to be killed in the crowd.

E.T. Stead, (Phil Stead) in the massive De Dietrich, lost control while overtaking another car in Saint-Pierre-du-Palais, and was injured, he was rescued and tended to by the only lady competitor Camille du Gast. The third De Dietrich driven by Loraine Barrow crashed into a tree and was said to have blown up, wounding the driver and killing the mechanic. Barrow had been in bad health before the race, but had to leave nevertheless since the rules forbade a driver change.[2]

Rolls's Panhard-Levassor, Mayhew's Napier, Maurice Farman's Panhard, the Wolseleys of Herbert Austin and Sidney Girling, Béconnais's Darracq all had major technical issues, and had to retire.

Overall, half the cars had crashed or retired, and at least twelve people were presumed dead, and over 100 wounded; the actual count was lower, with eight people dead, three spectators and five racers.

The French Parliament reacted strongly to the news of the numerous accidents. An emergency Council of Ministers was called, and the officers were forced to shut down the race in Bordeaux, transfer the cars to Spanish territory and restart from the border to Madrid; the Spanish government denied permission for this, and the race was declared officially over in Bordeaux.

The race was called off, and by order of the French Government the cars were impounded and towed to the rail station by horses and transported to Paris by train. (The cars' engines were not even allowed to be restarted.[3])

Newspapers and experts declared the "death of sport racing", it was commonly thought that no other races would be allowed, and for many years this was true: there would not be another race on public highways until the 1927 Mille Miglia.

The effects of the race extended to automobile regulations. Motions to outlaw speeding by car at over 40 km/h (25 mph) were proposed, some calling for the ban to be enforced in races, too.[citation needed]

While some newspapers, such as Le Temps, used the disaster in a demagogic way to attack the car fashion and the race world, other (such as la Presse) tried to downplay the issue, stating that just 3 "involuntary" victims, the spectators, had been sacrificed on the "altar of Progress".

La Liberté rejected the call for a ban on sport races, since automobile manufacturing was a source of French pride, and the socialist Petite Republique defended the car as a mean of mass empowerment and freedom from work fatigue.

Le Matin supported the opinion first stated by the Marquis de Dion, that speed races were useless, both as a publicity stunt and as testbed for technological improvement; the only useful races were the endurance and fuel efficiency ones. There was a bit of truth in the opinion that race cars had very little in common with common commercial cars, with their oversized engines and extreme solutions.

A specialized magazine, L'Auto, tried to reach consensus on a new set of rules for sport races; fewer drivers and cars, classes based on speed and power (not just weight), and the public placed far away from the race course.

The first fair and authoritative analysis came from La Locomotion Automobile, which identified the causes of the disaster; the massacre was due to a few concurrent factors:

Speed. Cars raced at over 140 km/h, a speed not reached even by the fastest trains of the time.

Dust, which worsened the driving conditions and was direct cause of a few accidents.

Excessive and poorly managed public, worsened by an inadequate crowd control and a general underestimation of the danger involved in a car race.

The police force was accused of being more interested in the race than the public safety, forgetting to intervene when people crossed the road or stood in it; the organization was held responsible for poor choices. The random start order was a mess, since faster and more powerful cars were mixed with slower and smaller ones, causing many unneeded overtakings; some drivers (such as Mouter in the De Dietrich) managed to advance almost 80 places, just because they started far back and had many small cars and amateur drivers ahead. The interval between starts was reduced to one minute only, worsening the dust problem and randomly mixing in motorcycles, voiturettes and race cars.

The rule preventing a driver change before the race start was also under scrutiny; some drivers, it was said including Marcel Renault, had health problems at the start line but had to race because the brands could not retire a vehicle, and no driver change was possible.

The London's weekly magazine The Car verified the death claims, discovering that some of them were only rumours, and investigated the actual causes.

In the Angoulême accident killing the soldier and a spectator, it was discovered that the child was at fault, having crossed the road after escaping his parents.

The accident at the rail cross that occurred to Porter was a fault of the organization, since the cross was not attended; the leading hypothesis about a loss of control due to a mechanical failure was dismissed.

Barrow's car did not blow up, it hit a dog while avoiding another one and crashed into a tree, but did not explode or burn; the idea of an engine exploding had great appeal to the public, but was a product of ignorance and hype.

Marcel Renault's and Stead's accidents were the only true racing incidents, and were both due to the excessive dust impairing visibility during an overtaking; the blame was put on the officers and the rules, and the death toll was deemed surprisingly low given those premises.

French Prime Minister Émile Combes, was accused of being partially responsible, because he agreed to allow the race to proceed, he tried to explain that he did not know cars could be so fast and dangerous.
He claimed to be against any restriction on the automotive makers, and both Parliament and Senate agreed with a formal vote in support of his decision.

Just a few days after the disaster, the newspapers lost interest in the Paris–Madrid race; the sport pages were all about another race, at the Ardennes racetrack the following June 22.

Madrid is the capital of Spain and the largest municipality in both the Community of Madrid and Spain as a whole. The city has 3.3 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of 6.5 million. It is the third-largest city in the European Union, smaller than only London and Berlin, its monocentric metropolitan area is the third-largest in the EU, smaller only than those of London and Paris; the municipality covers 604.3 km2. Madrid lies on the River Manzanares in the Community of Madrid; as the capital city of Spain, seat of government, residence of the Spanish monarch, Madrid is the political and cultural centre of the country. The current mayor is Manuela Carmena from the party Ahora Madrid; the Madrid urban agglomeration has the third-largest GDP in the European Union and its influence in politics, entertainment, media, science and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the world's major global cities. Madrid is home to Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid. Due to its economic output, high standard of living, market size, Madrid is considered the leading economic hub of the Iberian Peninsula and of Southern Europe.

مجريط Majrīṭ is the first documented reference to the city. It is recorded in Andalusi Arabic during the al-Andalus period; the name Magerit was retained in Medieval Spanish. The most ancient recorded name of the city "Magerit" comes from the name of a fortress built on the Manzanares River in the 9th century AD, means "Place of abundant water" in Arabic. A wider number of theories have been formulated on possible earlier origins. According to legend, Madrid was founded by Ocno Bianor and was named "Metragirta" or "Mantua Carpetana". Others contend that the original name of the city was "Ursaria", because of the many bears that were to be found in the nearby forests, together with the strawberry tree, have been the emblem of the city since the Middle Ages, it is speculated that the origin of the current name of the city comes from the 2nd century BC. The Roman Empire established a settlement on the banks of the Manzanares river; the name of this first village was "Matrice". Following the invasions carried out by the GermanicSueves and Vandals, as well as the Sarmatic Alans during the 5th century AD, the Roman Empire no longer had the military presence required to defend its territories on the Iberian Peninsula, as a consequence, these territories were soon occupied by the Vandals, who were in turn dispelled by the Visigoths, who ruled Hispania in the name of the Roman emperor taking control of "Matrice".

In the 8th century, the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula saw the name changed to "Mayrit", from the Arabic term ميرا Mayra and the Ibero-Roman suffix it that means'place'. The modern "Madrid" evolved from the Mozarabic "Matrit", still in the Madrilenian gentilic. Although the site of modern-day Madrid has been occupied since prehistoric times, there are archaeological remains of Carpetani settlement, Roman villas, a Visigoth basilica near the church of Santa María de la Almudena and three Visigoth necropoleis near Casa de Campo, Tetúan and Vicálvaro, the first historical document about the existence of an established settlement in Madrid dates from the Muslim age. At the second half of the 9th century, EmirMuhammad I of Córdoba built a fortress on a headland near the river Manzanares, as one of the many fortresses he ordered to be built on the border between Al-Andalus and the kingdoms of León and Castile, with the objective of protecting Toledo from the Christian invasions and as a starting point for Muslim offensives.

His Peugeot is believed to have been the first car based in Cambridge, one of the first three cars owned in Wales. An early motoring enthusiast, he joined the Self-Propelled Traffic Association, which campaigned against the restrictions imposed on motor vehicles by the Locomotive Act, became a founder member of the Automobile Club of Great Britain, with which the Association merged in 1897. Rolls spent time at Cambridge bicycle racing. In 1896, he won a Half Blue and the following year became captain of the Cambridge University Bicycle Club. Rolls graduated from Cambridge in 1898 and began working on the steam yacht Santa Maria followed by a position at the London and North Western Railway in Crewe. However, his talents lay more in motoring pioneering than practical engineering. Rolls & Co. based in Fulham, to sell French Peugeot and BelgianMinerva vehicles. Rolls was introduced to Henry Royce by a friend at the Royal Automobile Club, Henry Edmunds, a director of Royce Ltd. Edmunds showed him Royce's car and arranged the historic meeting between Rolls and Royce at the Midland Hotel, Manchester, on 4 May 1904.

In spite of his preference for three or four cylinder cars, Rolls was impressed with the two-cylinder Royce 10 and in a subsequent agreement of 23 December 1904 agreed to take all the cars Royce could make. These would be of two, three and six cylinders and would be badged as Rolls-Royces; the first Rolls-Royce car, the Rolls-Royce 10 hp, was unveiled at the Paris Salon in December 1904, although in the early advertising it was the name of Rolls, emphasised over that of Royce. In 1906 Rolls and Royce formalised their partnership by creating Rolls-Royce Limited, with Rolls appointed Technical managing director on a salary of £750 per annum plus 4% of the profits in excess of £10,000. Rolls provided the financial business acumen to complement Royce's technical expertise. In 1907 Rolls-Royce Limited bought out C. S. Rolls & Co. Rolls put much effort into publicising the quietness and smoothness of the Rolls-Royce, at the end of 1906 travelled to the USA to promote the new cars; the company was winning awards for the quality and reliability of its cars by 1907.

But by 1909 Rolls' interest in the business was waning, at the end of the year he resigned as Technical managing director and became a non-executive director. Rolls was a pioneer aviator and balloonist, making over 170 balloon ascents. In 1903 he won the Gordon Bennett Gold Medal for the longest single flight time. By 1907 Rolls' interest turned to flying and he tried to persuade Royce to design an aero engine, he became the second Englishman to go up in an aeroplane. Piloted by Wilbur Wright their flight on 8 October 1908 from Camp d'Auvours, eleven kilometres east of Le Mans, lasted four minutes and twenty seconds, he bought one of six Wright Flyer aircraft built by Short Brothers under licence from the Wright Brothers and from early October 1909 made more than 200 flights. Founder in 1901 with Frank Hedges Butler of the ballooning club that became the Royal Aero Club in March 1910 he was the second person they licensed to fly an aeroplane, he became the first man to make a non-stop double crossing of the English Channel by plane taking 95 minutes on 2 June 1910.

For this feat, which included the first East-bound aerial crossing of the English Channel, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Aero Club. There is a statue in Monmouth to commemorate another in Dover. On 12 July 1910, at the age of 32, Rolls was killed in an air crash at Hengistbury Airfield, Bournemouth when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a flying display, he was the first Briton to be killed in an aeronautical accident with a powered aircraft, the eleventh person internationally. His was the first powered aviation fatality in the United Kingdom, his grave lies at the churchyard of St Cadoc's Church, Llangattock-Vibon-Avel, where many of the Rolls family lie buried in various family tombs. His grave is just below Llangattock Manor and bears the inscription: "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." A statue in his memory, in which he is seen holding a biplane model, was erected in Agincourt Square, Monmouth. A further memorial to him was unveiled in 1981 in the bottom playing field of St Peter's School, developed on the site of Hengistbury Airfield.

Louis Renault was a French industrialist, one of the founders of Renault and a pioneer of the automobile industry. Renault built one of France's largest automobile manufacturing concerns, which bears his name to this day. During World War I his factories contributed massively to the war effort notably so by the creation and manufacture of the first effective tank: the Renault FT tank. Accused of collaborating with the Germans during World War II, he died while awaiting trial in liberated France toward the end of 1944 under uncertain circumstances, his company was seized and nationalized by the provisional government of France although he died before he could be tried. His factories were the only ones permanently expropriated by the French government. In 1956, Time Magazine described Renault as "rich and famous, brilliant brutal, the little Napoleon of an automaking empire — vulgar, domineering, impatient, he was a terror to associates, a friend to none," adding that to the French working man, Renault became known as "the ogre of Billancourt."

The fourth of six children born into the bourgeois Parisian family of Alfred and Berthe Renault, Louis Renault attended Lycée Condorcet. He was fascinated by engineering and mechanics from an early age and spent hours in the Serpollet steam car workshop or tinkering with old Panhard engines in the tool shed of the family's second home in Billancourt, he built his first car in 1898, hiring a pair of workmen to modify a used 3⁄4 hp De Dion-Bouton cycle which featured a revolutionary universally jointed driveshaft and a three-speed gearbox with reverse, with the third gear in direct drive. Renault called his car the Voiturette. On 24 December 1898, he won a bet with his friends that his invention with an innovative crankshaft could beat a car with a bicycle-like chain drive up the slope of Rue Lepic in Montmartre; as well as winning the bet, Renault received 13 definite orders for the vehicle. Seeing the commercial potential, he teamed up with his two older brothers and Fernand, who had business experience from working in their father's button and textiles firm.

They formed the Renault Frères company on 25 February 1899. Business and administration was handled by the elder brothers, with Louis dedicating himself to design and manufacturing. Marcel was killed in the 1903 Paris-Madrid motor race, in 1908, Louis Renault took overall control of the company after Fernand retired for health reasons. Fernand subsequently died in 1909. On 26 September 1918 Renault aged 40, married the 21-year-old Christiane Boullaire, sister of French painter Jacques Boullaire, they had Jean-Louis. They kept homes at 90 Avenue Foch in Paris and a country estate near Saint-Pierre-du-Vauvray, Rouen, in the department of Eure, called the Chateau de la Batellerie à Herqueville or Chateau Herqueville; the Chateau fronted on more than 3 km of the Seine. At Renault's request and expense, the small town hall of Herqueville was moved. Renault's personnel entered the residence via an underground tunnel. Locations of Chateau Herqueville: 49°14′31.66″N 1°15′24.55″E See: Chateau Herqueville See: Chateau Herqueville See: Chateau Herqueville At the start of the First World War, in August 1914, in response to the acute shortage of artillery ammunition Renault suggested that car factories such as Renault could manufacture 75mm shells using hydraulic presses rather than with the usual longer and costlier lathe operations.

Identical methods were used by Andre Citroen in his own factory. The resulting shells helped overcome the shortages, but as they had to be manufactured in two pieces they were inherently weak at the base thus sometimes letting hot gases detonate the melinite inside the shell. Over 600 French 75mm guns were destroyed by premature explosions in 1915, their crews killed or injured. Louis Renault was decorated with the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur after the war for the major contribution of his factories to the war effort, his factories' mass production in 1918 of the revolutionary and effective Renault FT tank, which he had designed with Rodolphe Ernst-Metzmaier, was Renault's most significant contribution during that period. During the interwar period his right-wing opinions became well known, leading to various cases of labour unrest with proletarianavant-garde workers at the Boulogne Billancourt plant, he pleaded for a necessary union between European nations. Louis Renault competed fiercely with André Citroën, whom he called "le petit Juif", growing paranoid and reclusive at the same time, concerned about the rising power of Communism and labor unions retreating to his country estate, a castle on the river Seine near Rouen.

Renault remained in complete control of his company until 1942, dealing with its rapid expansion while designing several new inventions, most of which are still in use today, such as hydraulic shock absorbers, the modern drum brake and compressed gas ignition. In 1938, Renault visited Adolf Hitler, by 1939 he had become an important supplier for the French army. At the time Hitler's Wehrmacht invaded France in 1940, Louis Renault was in the US, sent by his government to ask for tanks, he returned to find the Franco-German armistice in place. Renault was faced with the choice of cooperating with the Germans and forestalling them from moving his factory and equipment to Germany, which would lead to an accusation of collaboration with the enemy, he put his factories at the service of Vichy France, which meant that he was assisting

De Dion-Bouton was a French automobile manufacturer and railcar manufacturer operating from 1883 to 1953. The company was founded by the Marquis Jules-Albert de Dion, Georges Bouton, Bouton's brother-in-law Charles Trépardoux; the company was formed after de Dion in 1881 saw a toy locomotive in a store window and asked the toymakers to build another. Engineers Bouton and Trépardoux had been eking out a living with scientific toys at a shop in the Passage de Léon, near "rue de la Chapelle" in Paris. Trépardoux had long dreamed of building a steam car. De Dion inspired by steam and with ample money, De Dion, Bouton et Trépardoux was formed in Paris in 1883; this became the De Dion-Bouton automobile company, the world's largest automobile manufacturer for a time, becoming well known for their quality and durability. Before 1883 was over, they had set up shop in larger premises in the Passage de Léon, Paris and dropped steam engines for boats, produced a steam car. With the boiler and engine mounted at the front, driving the front wheels by belts and steering with the rear, it burned to the ground on trials.

They built a second, La Marquise, the next year, with a more conventional steering and rear-wheel drive, capable of seating four. The Marquis de Dion entered one of these in an 1887 trial, "Europe's first motoring competition", the brainchild of one M. Fossier of cycling magazine Le Vélocipède. Evidently, the promotion was insufficient, for the De Dion was the sole entrant, but it completed the course, with de Dion at the tiller, was clocked at 60 km/h; this must be taken with considerable care. The vehicle survives, in road-worthy condition, has been a regular entry in the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. Following this singular success, the company offered steam tricycles with boilers between the front wheels and two-cylinder engines, they were built in small numbers, evidently a favorite of young playboys. They were joined by a larger tractor, able to pull trailers; this larger vehicle introduced "dead" axle. On July 22, 1894, Paris–Rouen race, it averaged 18.7 km/h over the 126 km route, but was disqualified for needing both a driver and a stoker.

Two more cars were made in 1885 followed by a series of lightweight two-cylinder tricars, which from 1892 had Michelinpneumatic tyres. In 1893, steam tractors were introduced which were designed to tow horse type carriages for passengers or freight and these used an innovative axle design which would become known as the De Dion tube, where the location and drive function of the axle are separated; the company manufactured steam buses and trucks until 1904. Trepardoux, staunchly supporting steam, resigned in 1894 as the company turned to internal combustion vehicles; the steam car remained in production less unchanged for ten years more. By 1889, de Dion was becoming convinced the future lay in the internal combustion engine, the company had built a ten-cylinder two-row rotary. After Trépardoux resigned in 1894, the company became De Bouton et Compagnie. For 1895, Bouton created a new 137 cc one-cylinder engine with trembler coil ignition. Proving troublesome at its designed speed of 900 rpm, when Bouton increased the revs, the problems vanished.

In trials, it achieved an unprecedented 3500 rpm, was run at 2,000 rpm, a limit imposed by its atmospheric valves and surface carburettor. Inlet and exhaust valves were overhead, a flywheel was fitted to each end of the crankshaft; this engine was fitted behind the rear axle of a tricycle frame bought from Decauville, fitted with the new Michelin pneumatic tires. It showed superb performance, went on the market in 1896 with the engine enlarged to 1¼ CV 185 cc, with 1¾ CV in 1897. By the time production of the petite voiture tricar stopped in 1901, it had 2¾ CV, while racers had as much as 8 CV. In 1898, Louis Renault had a De Dion-Bouton modified with fixed drive shaft and ring and pinion gear, making "perhaps the first hot rod in history"; the same year, the tricar was joined by a four-wheeler and in 1900 by a vis a vis voiturette, the Model D, with its 3¾ CV 402 cc single-cylinder engine under the seat and drive to the rear wheels through a two-speed gearbox. This curious design had the passenger facing the driver.

The voiturette had one inestimable advantage: the expanding clutches of the gearbox were operated by a lever on the steering column. The Model D was developed through Models E, G, I, J, with 6 CV by 1902, when the 8 CV Model K rear-entry phaeton appeared, with front-end styling resembling the contemporary Renault; until World War I, De Dion-Boutons had an unusual decelerator pedal which reduced engine speed and applied a transmission brake. In 1902, the Model O introduced three speeds, standard for all De Dion-Boutons in 1904. A small number of electric cars were made in 1901. De Dion-Bouton supplied engines to vehicle manufacturers such as Société Parisienne who mounted a 2.5 hp unit directly on the front axle of their front wheel drive voiturette the'Viktoria Combination'. The De Dion-Bouton engine is considered to the first high-speed lightweight internal combustion engine, it was

Marseille is the second-largest city of France. The main city of the historical province of Provence, it nowadays is the prefecture of the department of Bouches-du-Rhône and region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, it is located on French Riviera coast near the mouth of the Rhône. The city covers an area of 241 km2 and had a population of 852,516 in 2012, its metropolitan area, which extends over 3,173 km2 is the third-largest in France after Paris and Lyon, with a population of 1,831,500 as of 2010. Known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as Massalia, Marseille was an important European trading centre and remains the main commercial port of the French Republic. Marseille is now France's largest city on the Mediterranean coast and the largest port for commerce and cruise ships; the city was European Capital of Culture in 2013 and European Capital of Sport in 2017. It is home to Aix-Marseille University. Marseille is the second-largest city in France after Paris and the centre of the third-largest metropolitan area in France after Paris and Lyon.

To the east, starting in the small fishing village of Callelongue on the outskirts of Marseille and stretching as far as Cassis, are the Calanques, a rugged coastal area interspersed with small fjord-like inlets. Farther east still are the city of Toulon and the French Riviera. To the north of Marseille, beyond the low Garlaban and Etoile mountain ranges, is the 1,011 m Mont Sainte Victoire. To the west of Marseille is the former artists' colony of l'Estaque; the airport lies to the north west of the city at Marignane on the Étang de Berre. The city's main thoroughfare stretches eastward from the Old Port to the Réformés quarter. Two large forts flank the entrance to the Old Port—Fort Saint-Nicolas on the south side and Fort Saint-Jean on the north. Farther out in the Bay of Marseille is the Frioul archipelago which comprises four islands, one of which, If, is the location of Château d'If, made famous by the Dumas novel The Count of Monte Cristo; the main commercial centre of the city intersects with the Canebière at Rue St Ferréol and the Centre Bourse.

The centre of Marseille has several pedestrianised zones, most notably Rue St Ferréol, Cours Julien near the Music Conservatory, the Cours Honoré-d'Estienne-d'Orves off the Old Port and the area around the Hôtel de Ville. To the south east of central Marseille in the 6th arrondissement are the Prefecture and the monumental fountain of Place Castellane, an important bus and metro interchange. To the south west are the hills of the 7th and 8th arrondissements, dominated by the basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde. Marseille's main railway station—Gare de Marseille Saint-Charles—is north of the Centre Bourse in the 1st arrondissement; the city has a hot-summer mediterranean climate with mild, humid winters and warm to hot dry summers. December and February are the coldest months, averaging temperatures of around 12 °C during the day and 4 °C at night. July and August are the hottest months, averaging temperatures of around 28–30 °C during the day and 19 °C at night in the Marignane airport but in the city near the sea the average high temperature is 27 °C in July.

Marseille is the sunniest major city in France with over 2,900 hours of sunshine while the average sunshine in country. It is the driest major city with only 512 mm of precipitation annually thanks to the Mistral, a cold, dry wind originating in the Rhône Valley that occurs in winter and spring and which brings clear skies and sunny weather to the region. Less frequent is the Sirocco, a hot, sand-bearing wind, coming from the Sahara Desert. Snowfalls are infrequent; the hottest temperature was 40.6 °C on 26 July 1983 during a great heat wave, the lowest temperature was −14.3 °C on 13 February 1929 during a strong cold wave. Marseille was founded circa 600 BC as the Greek colony of Massalia and populated by settlers from Phocaea, it became the preeminent Greek polis in the Hellenized region of southern Gaul. The city-state sided with the Roman Republic against Carthage during the Second Punic War, retaining its independence and commercial empire throughout the western Mediterranean as Rome expanded into Western Europe and North Africa.

The history of the de Dietrich family has been linked to that of France and of Europe for over three centuries. To this day, the company that bears the family name continues to play a major role in the economic life of Alsace. De Dietrich is a holding company based in France which traces its history back to 1684; the incumbent chairman of the supervisory board Marc-Antoine de Dietrich represents the 11th consecutive generation at the helm of the company. De Dietrich has been active in the automobile and industrial equipment industry amongst others. 1684: Johann von Dietrich acquires the Jaegerthal forge. 1719: The family is made Baron by the Holy Roman Empire. 1749-1751: Baron Jean de Dietrich has the castle and gardens of Château de la Cour d'Angleterre built in Bischheim near Strasbourg 1761: Baron Jean de Dietrich is made Count du Ban de la Roche by Louis XV. He becomes the largest land owner in Alsace and expands the family's industrial empire by building or acquiring forges and furnaces. 1778: Louis XVI grants Jean de Dietrich the use of a hunting horn trademark to deter counterfeiters.

This logo still serves as a symbol of quality today. 1792: Philippe-Frédéric de Dietrich, first mayor of Strasbourg in republican France, orders captain Rouget de Lisle to compose a military hymn for the Army of the Rhine. First sung in Philippe-Frederic's parlor on Place Broglie, "La Marseillaise" became France's national anthem. 1804: After the havoc left by the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte helps De Dietrich rebuild. 1848: De Dietrich embraces the industrial era by progressively reducing the production of cast irons in favor of mechanical and railroad equipment. 1870: Despite the annexation by Germany of Alsace-Lorraine, the Dietrich family decides to remain close to the factories and employees and stays in Alsace. This choice calls for a diversification of De Dietrich's activities in order to adapt to German market demands and having been shut out of the French railroad market; the company turns towards consumer durables: stoves, wooden furniture, enameled cast iron bathtubs – and urban or industrial equipment – tramways, distillation equipment, industry specific wagons.

1896: De Dietrich enters automobile manufacturing. Eugene, Baron de Turckheim, buys manufacturing rights to fils' design. During its automotive development it hired amongst others the services of famous car builder Ettore Bugatti to design of the cars and Émile Mathis to handle commercialization. 1905: De Dietrich decides to pull out of automobile manufacturing to focus on mechanical construction, railroad equipment, process systems, central heating equipment and appliances. 1992: De Dietrich assumes control of Cogifer, market leader fixed railroad installations and forgives control of the appliances business to Thomson, control on assumed by Fagor-Brandtuntil this day. 1995: De Dietrich sells its interest in rolling stock railroad equipment manufacturing "De Dietrich Ferroviaire" (DDF's factory is in Reichshoffen". A majority stake in DDF was acquired by Alstom and the company is now known as Alstom-DDF. 2000: After the successive acquisitions of Rosenmund-Guedu and QVF, De Dietrich renames its chemical equipment division "De Dietrich Process Systems".

De Dietrich is the object a Public Tender Offer by the la Société Industrielle du Hanau, controlled by ABN AMRO Capital Investissement France and the De Dietrich family. 2001: In July 2001, after 50 years of quotation, De Dietrich is pulled out the market. 2002: In September 2002, De Dietrich sells the control of Cogifer and Cogifer TF, to Vossloh a German Industrial group specialized in railroad equipment. In December 2002, the "Société Industrielles du Hanau" takes over De Dietrich & Cie and assumes the name "De Dietrich". 2004: In July 2004, De Dietrich divests from "De Dietrich Thermique", market leader in water heating equipment to Remeha. The new entity formed De Dietrich Remeha, becomes one of Europe's largest heating industry player in the fields of condensing boilers and renewable energies. In December 2004, the family regained 100% control of the holding company; this operation represents one of Europe's largest family re-investments in recent years. De Dietrich today focuses on De Dietrich Process Systems.

Angoulême is a commune, the capital of the Charente department, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of southwestern France. The inhabitants of the commune are known as Angoumoisines. Located on a plateau overlooking a meander of the Charente River, the city is nicknamed the "balcony of the southwest"; the city proper's population is a little less than 42,000 but it is the centre of an urban area of 110,000 people extending more than fifteen kilometres from east to west. The capital of Angoumois in the Ancien Régime, Angoulême was a fortified town for a long time, was coveted due to its position at the centre of many roads important to communication, so therefore it suffered many sieges. From its tumultuous past, the city, perched on a rocky spur, inherited a large historical and urban heritage which attracts a lot of tourists. Nowadays, Angoulême is at the centre of an agglomeration, one of the most industrialised regions between Loire and Garonne, it is a commercial and administrative city with its own university of technology, a vibrant cultural life.

This life is dominated by the Angoulême International Comics Festival, the FFA Angoulême Francophone Film Festival and the Musiques Métisses Festival that contribute to the international renown of the city. Moreover, Angoulême hosts 40 animation and video game studios that produce half of France's animated production; the city is developing filming for both French television and cinema. Wes Anderson chose Angoulême for his next movie at the end of 2018. Angoulême is called "Ville de l'Image" which means "City of the Image"; the commune has been awarded four flowers by the National Council of Towns and Villages in Bloom in the Competition of cities and villages in Bloom. Angoulême is an Acropolis city located on a hill overlooking a loop of the Charente limited in area upstream by the confluence of the Touvre and downstream by the Anguienne and Eaux Claires. Angoulême is located at the intersection of a major north-south axis: the N10 Paris-Bayonne. Angoulême is connected to Périgueux and Saint-Jean-d'Angely by the D939 and to Libourne by the D674.

By train: the Paris-Bordeaux line, served by TGV, passes through Angoulême and the TER Limoges-Saintes provides connections. By water: although the river Charente is only used for tourism, it was a communication channel for freight, until the 19th century and the port of l'Houmeau was busy; the Angoulême-Cognac International Airport is at Brie-Champniers. Old Angoulême is the old part between the ramparts and the town centre with winding streets and small squares; the city centre is located on the plateau and was portrayed by Honoré de Balzac in "The Lost Illusions" as "the height of grandeur and power". There is a Castle, a town hall, a prefecture, a cathedral with grand houses everywhere. Unlike Old Angoulême, the entire city centre was rebuilt in the 19th century. Surrounding the city were five old faubourgs: l'Houmeau, Saint-Cybard, Saint-Martin, Saint-Ausone, la Bussatte; the district of l'Houmeau was described by Balzac as "based on trade and money" because this district lived on trade and their scows.

The port of l'Houmeau was created in 1280 on the river bank. It marked the beginning of the navigable part from Angoulême to the sea. Saint-Cybard, on the bank of the Charente, was created around the Abbey of Saint-Cybard became an industrial area with papermills Le Nil. Saint-Martin - Saint-Ausone is a district composed of two former parishes outside the ramparts. At La Bussatte the Champ de Mars esplanade is now converted into a shopping mall, adjoins Saint-Gelais. Today the city has fifteen districts: Centre-ville Old Angoulême Saint-Ausone - Saint-Martin Saint-Gelais La Bussatte - Champ de Mars L'Houmeau Saint-Cybard Victor-Hugo, Saint-Roch is notable for its military presence. Basseau is a district, created in the 19th century with the port of Basseau, the explosives factory in 1821, the Laroche-Joubert papermill in 1842 the bridge in 1850. Sillac - La Grande-Garenne was a private housing estate was built up with HLM units. Bel-Air, la Grand Font in the railway station district with housing blocks from the 1950s at Grand Font.

La Madeleine, rebuilt after the bombings of 1944. Ma Campagne is a district, detached from Puymoyencommune in 1945 and built-up as a collective habitat from 1972. Le Petit Fresquet was detached from Puymoyen and is semi-rural. Frégeneuil was detached from Puymoyen and is semi-rural; the Port-l'Houmeau, the old port on the Charente located in the district of l'Houmeau is in a flood zone and during floods the Besson Bey Boulevard is cut. Geologically the town belongs to the Aquitaine Basin as does three quarters of the western department of Charente; the commune is located on the same limestone from the Upper Cretaceous period which occupies the southern half of the department of Charente, not far from Jurassic formations beginning at Gond-Pontouvre. The earliest Cretaceous period - the Cenomanian- is in the low areas, at an average altitude of 50m; the city was established on the Plateau that dominates the loop of the River Charente, a Turonian formation which forms a dissected plateau of parallel valleys and a cuesta facing north that extends towards La Couronne to the west and Garat to the east

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Automobiles Darracq France was a manufacturer of motor vehicles and aero engines in Suresnes, near Paris. The enterprise, known at first as A Darracq et Cie, was founded in 1896 by successful businessman Alexandre Darracq. — In 1902 he sold his new business to a privately held English company named A …

Darracq's famous "flying" Fifteen rear entrance tonneau body

M. Alexandre Darracq is leaving Paris

Clegg's 16 horsepower type V14

Captain H. Genty de la Touloubre, voiturettes class winner at the Circuit des Ardennes 1904 on his Darracq (gare de Bastogne, before departure).

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100 Saar francs reverse and obverse

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Farman making the first cross-country flight accomplished with an aeroplane

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